The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Ircla7id before the Conquest. 8i
the interchange of \vives between Irish chieftains was at
that time no uncommon event. O'Ruarie, however, never
forgave the insult, and, as we have seen, he revenged him-
self fourteen years afterwards by procuring the deposition
of Dermot and his banishment beyond the sea. That at
the time Dermot was not without friends and sympathisers
may be seen from the following wail written on the margin
of one of the pages of the Rook of Leinster :— " O Virgin
Mary, it is a great deed that has been done in Erin this
day, the Kalends of August, viz., Dermod, the son of
Donach MacMurrough, King of Leinster, and of the Danes
of Dublin, to have been banished over the sea eastwards
by the men of Erin. Uch !
Uch
!
O
Lord !
what
shall I
do?"
The condition to which Ireland was reduced by the end
of this period seems to have been one of absolute and
complete anarchy. The annalists frequently deplore the
condition of the country. In the annals of Loch Ce, under
the year 1061, we read— " Numerous truly are the events
of this year between slayings, plunderings, and battles.
No one could relate them all, but only a few of many of
them are related on account of the dignity of the people
mentioned in them." There are similar entries in some of
the other annals, and the Four Masters record under the year
1 145 — "Great war in this year, so that Ireland was a
trembling sod." In the later years of the period, and con-
nected, we think, with a revolution or reformation in the
church, which we shall afterwards notice, we find the clergy
frequently interfering with the object of making and main-
taining peace, and we are told that at one time Cellach, or
Celsus, Bishop and Abbot of Armagh, was absent from
Armagh for more than a year endeavouring to make peace
among the men of Ireland. But their efforts had little or
no effect. There is no single year from the battle of Clontarff
till thi; arrival of the English in which the Four
Masters do not record battles, plunderings, or outrages
and during the whole one hundred and fifty-three x'ears
6
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